302 Chapter 302: Two-headed Dragon (1/2)
”What have you done?” Henry Porter sagged to his knees, almost mired in despair. He gazed up at the ascending two-headed dragon, almost suffocated by the crimson bloodlust that it emanated. Around him, mercenaries were choking and staggering from the sheer presence of the monster.
”Our Lord!” Liu crowed, spreading both hands as far out as he could. Tears were streaming down his face. ”Finally! For us to be blessed to witness your descent into our mundane world…! Come! Sate your hunger on this blasted world! Visit your wrath upon the pitiful souls who fester and corrupt this world with their naïve ideals of peace! Drown this world in blood!”
”Blood for the Blood God!” the disciples of the Blood Slaughter Sect chorused in unison. I swear, that phrase was getting irritating by now.
The two-headed dragon glanced down upon Liu with both pairs of eyes, disdain evident in those crimson pupils. For a second, Liu held its gaze, his expression rapturous.
And then he was gone. He and all of his disciples.
”?!”
The two-headed dragon almost paid the puny humans no heed. Raising a claw, it stomped on Liu and the entire Blood Slaughter Sect, squashing them into nothingness. Their screams of shock and agony at the sudden betrayal were abruptly cut off, whisked away by the howling wind of madness and murder that swept around the hovering dragon.
A chill ran down my spine and I shuddered when a single line surfaced within my memory.
The Blood God cares not from where the blood flows, as long as it continues to flow.
It seems that even his most devout followers were not immune to his murderous whims.
”Are you kidding me?!”
”That dragon killed the people who summoned him?”
”What's going on? Infighting? A falling out?”
A murmur ran through the gathered merecenaries as they attempted to decipher what they had just witnessed. Despite the earlier shock and awe the two-headed dragon imposed upon them, they were slowly recovering and regaining their senses. As expected of the best mercenaries that the Federation had to offer.
”Don't let your guard down,” Brent warned. ”If that thing has no hesitation in killing the people who summoned him for no reason, then it definitely has no qualms squashing us.”
As if to puncuate the mercenary captain's sentence, the two-headed dragon dragged itself out of the abyss with a roar and swung its claw at us. We quickly dove out of the way, watching in horror as its massive paw raked three gigantic gouges in the earth, creating a ravine.
”How are we supposed to fight that thing?!” one of the mercenaries shrieked as he crashed heavily into a tree.
”Use your magic!” Redfield hollered as he flung an immense fireball at the emerging dragon. ”You are combat mages, aren't you? So stop whining and start fighting! We can't let that thing manifest fully in our world, or we're doomed!”
While the mercenaries struggled to put together an improvised combat plan on the spot and execute it, Porter hurried over to me, accompanied by his granddaughter.
”Richard, you seem to know the most about this 'Blood God.' Do you know its weakness? How to defeat it?”
As if I would conveniently know any such thing! Maybe in another story, the monster would happen to have some sort of weakness that we could conveniently exploit, but reality was never that easy. Most likely we would have to do this the hard way.
”Well…the stories that I have read…” I paused, taking care to emphasize that I was talking about fiction here, and not reality. ”…say that the only way to defeat such a Greater Daemon is through force. Destroying his physical body in this reality will banish him back to the Warp…uh, I mean back to his original dimension.”
”So how do we destroy him?” Lilith demanded impatiently. ”Look at the size of that thing! How many spells do we have to cast before we can finally wear him down to banish him back to his original dimension?!”
”If you can buy me time, I'll be able to nuke him to oblivion…never mind send him back to his dimension, I'll probably destroy him.” I had already begun casting the summoning spell for Draco ever since the two-headed dragon had first shown up, but I still needed some more time.
”We'll be counting on you then,” Brent called out. He vaulted over the gigantic claws and landed upon it. Running along the length of the dragon's arm, he drew tremendous amounts of mana into his staff. ”Bankai!”
”At least change the name, oi!” I shouted after him. He ignored me, obviously.
”Tie Quan Duan Feng!”
Ducking as the dragon swatted at him, he spun around in midair to punch the offending limb. Despite being so tiny in the greater scale of things, his attack sent the dragon staggering backward. While the two heads snarled and turned to dart toward the evading mercenary captain, presumably to swallow him whole.
”Oh no, you don't!”
Redfield launched a powerful fire spell that detonated against one of the dragon's heads and sent it snapping back. Twirling his spear, he swung it as he descended upon the other head and uneashed a similarly devastating torrent of flames that engulfed the serpentine head.
”Whoa!”
He was forced to alter his trajectory in midair and hurl himself away when the two-headed dragon swiped at him. He landed on the dragon's claw, and then sprang away before the dragon could throw him off. Landing several dozen meters away, he managed to skid to a stop before crashing into a tree or something.
Lilith and the others had also stepped forward now, pelting the two-headed dragon with spells and mana bullets. The mercenaries, in particular, were uleashing volleys of mana beams and projectiles at the dragon, but for all their efforts, they might as well be tossing pebbles into the ocean. The two-headed dragon reared up with a snarl, ignoring their insignificant attacks and focused on Brent, Redfield and the other officers. And Lilith.
Her Hellfire Bear was lumbering forward, but despite its large size, it was still dwarfed by the two-headed dragon that was ten times its size. Fortunately, by now Lilith was able to summon Kagutsuchi. The white whale-like dragon manifested within an inferno and released a storm of superheated plasma at the two-headed dragon, searing its crimson scales and eliciting an enraged howl.
”Richard!” Brent snapped at me breathlessly as he crashed almost clumsily on the ground, but somehow managed to land on all fours. ”We'll buy you the time you need to cast that nuke spell of yours!”
”You mean the two-headed dragon isn't going to patiently and politely wait for us to finish talking and strategizing in front of it before attacking?” I asked sarcastically as I watched the others fling their elemental spells at it. For a moment Brent gaped at me.
”What the fuck are you smoking? Why the hell would it do that?”